And most commendably, Anders has done this by bucking conventional wisdom at every turn, choosing a merit-based strategy for the books he adds to Pyr's catalog that has skirted the easy paths to bestsellerdom that bigger publishers, with their higher overhead, find it hard to ignore.

More than two decades ago, the Unitarian minister Robert Fulghum achieved bestsellerdom with All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, a small book that offered twee advice such as, “Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you” and “Flush.”